Home Property Sales by Elementary School Attendance Zones

This example provides a preliminary look at the number and prices of residential property transfers in Albemarle County from 2011 to 2018. Data are from the Albemarle County Office of Geographic Data Services. In particular, the Real Estate Information Card Level Data, Transfer History, and Other Parcel Characteristics, along with data from the NCES School Attendance Boundary Survey.

Data Preparation

Property transfer data from 2011 to 2018 are the basis of the following. These records were merged with card data and only records representing residential property transfers were kept. The remaining records were merged with other parcel characteristics and the number of residential property transfers in each year within each Elementary School District were calculated as well as the median recorded sale price within each year and school district.

Number of Residential Property Sales, 2011-2018

The Brownsville and Stone-Robinson school districts have consistently seen the most home sales over this period. Property transfers in the Baker-Butler and Cale school districts have grown in recent years as well.

The Scottsville and Hollymead school districts have experienced the fewest residential property sales across this period.

The map below represents the total number of property transfers across this period. Brownsville and Stone-Robinson districts stand out, again, for the high number of cumulative home sales.

Median Residential Property Sale Price, 2011-2018

Looking, instead, at the value of properties sold, the Murray and Meriwether Lewis school districts have consistently had the highest valued properties sold. Homes sold in the Scottsville school district have consistently been among the lowest valued.

The map below represents the average of the median home pricess for residential property transfers across this period. The more expensive Murray and Meriwether districts are easy to spot; Stone-Robinson also shows a higher average home value among properties sold.

Note: The missing polygon is for the Yancey school district, which was closed in 2017. This preliminary work relies on the SABS files from NCES, last upated in 2015 (as this is part of a larger project looking beyond Albemarle). This particular example could be improved by incorporating the shapefiles from Albemarle County’s GDS office, though similar files are not universally available across the larger region.